Friendly Baptist Church’s only goal for half a century been to help people lead a happier life through a relationship with God.

So Elizabeth Arrowood finds it hard to understand why anyone would deface the Gastonia sanctuary with profanity, blasphemous drawings and racial slights, much less try to set fire to it.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Arrowood, a member of the church whose father, Marshall Owens, serves as its pastor.

The vandalism at the church, located at 1422 N. Rhyne St., was discovered about 3:30 p.m. Monday. It wasn’t there during Sunday morning’s services, so police believe it happened late Sunday or early Monday.

Directly in front of the church, someone used a black Sharpie or magic marker to scrawl an obscenity on a concrete tablet with the Ten Commandments, before kicking it over and breaking it. A marker was also used to draw upside down crosses up the steps and on the wall around the front door.

More drawings and obscene phrases were made on the south wall of the church.

Gastonia Police are investigating the crime as an arson because burn marks are visible in a couple of places on the church’s vinyl siding, as if someone tried to ignite it with a cigarette lighter.

“We are going to be looking into it,” said Gastonia Police Sgt. Jimmy Arndt. “There’s nothing more we know right now.”

Arrowood said they also found a folded up piece of paper wedged in the front door with the message, “Your god cannot stop me.”

Owens has been the pastor of the church for eight years. He was at his full-time job and unavailable for comment Tuesday.

Arrowood and her father live behind Friendly Baptist, which has 25 to 30 members, she said. She suspects the vandalism was committed by younger children in the neighborhood who were out of school Monday.

One of the drawings on the wall near the front door was of a Star of David, a symbol of Judaism, though Arrowood suspects the vandals were attempting to draw a pentagram. Another phrase written on the side of the church made a critical reference, albeit misspelled, to Vietnamese people.

In the grand scheme of things, the defacement could’ve been worse, Arrowood said. But for a church that has already been struggling of late to pay basic bills and keep its head above water, it was a disheartening thing to discover, she said.

“If’s just the principle of it,” she said. “We feel like if they’re not caught, it’s going to happen again.”